Brother Cadfael's Penance (17 page)

"I do know of this," said Philip, his voice for the first time tight and wary. "A very ill chance. He never reached me. I heard of it only afterwards."

"And you were not expecting him? You had not sent for him?"

Philip was frowning now, his level black brows knotted tightly above the deep eyes. "No. There was no need. De Soulis had full powers. There is more to this. What is it you are saying?"

"I am saying that it was convenient he should die by accident so aptly, the day after his seal was added to the agreement that handed over Faringdon to King Stephen. If, indeed, he did not die in the night, before some other hand impressed his seal there. For there are those, and I have spoken with one of them, who will swear that Geoffrey FitzClare never would have consented to that surrender, had he still had voice to cry out or hand to lift and prevent. And if voice and hand had been raised against it, his men within, and maybe more than his would have fought on his side, and Faringdon would never have been taken."

"You are saying," said Philip, brooding, "that his death was no accident. And that it was another, not he, who affixed that seal to the surrender with all the rest. After the man was dead."

"That is what I am saying. Since he would never have set it there himself, nor let it go into other hands while he lived. And his consent was essential, to convince the garrison. I think he died as soon as the thing was broached to him, and he condemned it. There was no time to lose."

"Yet they rode out next day, to look for him, and brought him back to Faringdon openly, before the garrison."

"Wrapped in cloaks, in a litter. No doubt his men saw him pass, saw the recognizable face plainly. But they never saw him close. They were never shown the body after they were told that he had died. A dead man in the night can very easily be carried out to be somewhere in hiding, against his open return next day. The postern that was opened to let the king's negotiators in could as well let FitzClare's dead body out, to some hiding-place in the woods. And how else, for what purpose," said Cadfael heavily, "should FitzClare's seal go with Brien de Soulis to Coventry, and be found in his saddle-bag there."

Philip rose abruptly from his seat, and rounded the table sharply to pace across the room. He moved in silence, with a kind of contained violence, as if his mind was forcing his body into motion as the only means of relief from the smouldering turmoil within. He quartered the room like a prowling cat, and came to rest at length with clenched fists braced on the heavy chest in the darkest corner, his back turned to Cadfael and the source of light. His stillness was as tense as his pacing, and he was silent for long moments. When he turned, it was clear from the bright composure of his face that he had come to a reconciliation with everything he had heard.

"I knew nothing of all this. If it is truth, as my blood in me says it is truth, I had no hand in it, nor never would have allowed it."

"I never thought it," said Cadfael. "Whether the surrender was at your wish, no, at your decree!, I neither know nor ask, but no, you were not there, whatever was done was done at de Soulis's orders. Perhaps by de Soulis's hand. It would not be easy to get four other captains, with followings to be risked, to connive at murder. Better to draw him aside, man to man, and give out that he had been sent to confer with you at Cricklade, while one or two who had no objection to murder secretly conveyed away a dead man and the horse he was said to be riding on his midnight mission. And his seal was first on the vellum. No, you I never thought of as conniving at murder, whatever else I may have found within your scope. But FitzClare is dead, and de Soulis is dead, and you have not, I think, the reason you believed you had to mourn or avenge him. Nor any remaining cause to lay his death at the charge of a young man openly and honestly his enemy. There were many men in Faringdon who would be glad enough to avenge the murder of FitzClare. Who knows if some of them were also present at Coventry? He was well liked, and well served. And not every man of his following believed what he was told of that death."

"De Soulis would have been as ready for such as for Hugonin," said Philip.

"You think they would betray themselves as enemies? No, whoever set out to get close to him would take good care not to give any warning. But Yves had already cried out loud before the world his anger and enmity. No, yourself you know it, he would never have got within a sword's reach, let alone a slender little knife. Set Yves Hugonin free," said Cadfael, "and take me in my son's stead."

Philip came back slowly to his place at the table, and sat down, and finding his book left open and unregarded, quietly closed it. He leaned his head between long hands, and fixed his unnerving eyes again on Cadfael's face.

"Yes," he said, rather to himself than to Cadfael, "yes, there is the matter of your son Olivier. Let us not forget Olivier." But his voice was not reassuring. "Let us see if the man I have known, I thought well, is the same as the son you have known. Never has he spoken of a father to me."

"He knows no more than his mother told him, when he was a child. I have told him nothing. Of his father he knows only a too kindly legend, coloured too brightly by affection."

"If I question too close, refuse me answers. But I feel a need to know. A son of the cloister?"

"No," said Cadfael, "a son of the Crusade. His mother lived and died in Antioch. I never knew I had left her a son until I met with him here in England, and he named her, mentioned times, left me in no doubt at all. The cloister came later."

"The Crusade!" Philip echoed. His eyes burned up into gold. He narrowed their brightness curiously upon Cadfael's grizzled tonsure and lined and weathered face. "The Crusade that made a Christian kingdom in Jerusalem? You were there? Of all battles, surely the worthiest."

"The easiest to justify, perhaps," Cadfael agreed ruefully. "I would not say more than that."

The bright, piercing gaze continued to weigh and measure and wonder, with a sudden personal passion, staring through Cadfael into far distances, beyond the fabled Midland Sea, into the legendary Frankish kingdoms of Outremer. Ever since the fall of Edessa Christendom had been uneasy in its hopes and fears for Jerusalem, and popes and abbots were stirring in their sleep to consider their beleaguered capital, and raise their voices like clarions calling to the defence of the Church. Philip was not yet so old but he could quicken to the sound of the trumpet.

"How did it come that you encountered him here, all unknown? And once only?"

"Twice, and by God's grace there will be a third time," said Cadfael stoutly. He told, very briefly, of the circumstances of both those meetings.

"And still he does not know you for his sire? You never told him?"

"There is no need for him to know. No shame there, but no pride, either. His course is nobly set, why cause any tremor to deflect or shake it?"

"You ask nothing, want nothing of him?" The perilous bitterness was back in Philip's voice, husky with the pain of all he had hoped for from his own father, and failed to receive. Too fierce a love, perverted into too fierce a hate, corroded all his reflections on the anguished relationship between fathers and sons, too close and too separate, and never in balance.

"He owes me nothing," said Cadfael. "Nothing but such friendship and liking as we have deserved of each other by free will and earned trust, not by blood."

"And yet it is by blood," said Philip softly, "that you conceive you owe him so much, even to a life. Brother, I think you are telling me something I have learned to know all too well, though it took me years to master it. We are born of the fathers we deserve, and they engender the sons they deserve. We are our own penance and theirs. The first murderous warfare in the world, we are told, was between two brothers, but the longest and the bitterest is between fathers and sons. Now you offer me the father for the son, and you are offering me nothing that I want or need, in a currency I cannot spend. How could I ease my anger on you? I respect you, I like you, there are even things you might ask of me that I would give you with goodwill. But I will not give you Olivier."

It was a dismissal. There was no more speech between them that night. From the chapel, hollowly echoing along the corridors of stone, the bell chimed for Compline.

Chapter Nine

Cadfael rose at midnight, waking by long habit even without the matins bell, and being awake, recalled that he was lodged in a tiny cell close to the chapel. That gave him further matter for thought, though he had not considered earlier that it might have profound implications. He had declared himself honestly enough in his apostasy to Philip, and Philip, none the less, had lodged him here, where a visiting cleric might have expected such a courtesy. And being so close, and having been so considerately housed there, why should he not at least say Matins and Lauds before the altar? He had not surrendered or compromised his faith, however he had forfeited his rights and privileges.

The very act of kneeling in solitude, in the chill and austerity of stone, and saying the familiar words almost silently, brought him more of comfort and reassurance than he had dared to expect. If grace was not close to him, why should he rise from his knees so cleansed of the doubts and anxieties of the day, and clouded by no least shadow of the morrow's uncertainties?

He was in the act of withdrawing, and a pace or two from the open door, which he had refrained from closing in case it should creak loudly enough to wake others, when one who was awake, and as silent as he, looked in upon him. The faint light showed them to each other clearly enough.

"For an apostate," said Philip softly, "you keep the hours very strictly, brother." He wore a heavy furred gown over his nakedness, and walked barefooted on the stone. "Oh, no, you did not disturb me. I sat late tonight. For that you may take the blame if you wish."

"Even a recusant," said Cadfael, "may cling by the hems of grace. But I am sorry if I have kept you from sleep."

"There may be better than sorrow in it for you," said Philip. "We will speak again tomorrow. I trust you have all you need here, and lie at least as softly as in the dortoir at home? There is no great difference between the soldier's bed and the monk's, or so they tell me. I have tried only the one, since I came to manhood."

Truth, indeed, since he had taken up arms in this endless contention in support of his father before he reached twenty.

"I have known both," said Cadfael, "and complain of neither."

"So they told me, I recall, at Coventry. Some who knew of you. As I did not, not then," said Philip, and drew his gown closer about him. "I, too, had a word to say to God," he said, and passed Cadfael and entered his chapel. "Come to me after Mass."

"Not behind a closed door this time," said Philip, taking Cadfael by the arm as they came out from Mass, "but publicly in hall. No, you need not speak at all, your part is done. I have considered all that has emerged concerning Brien de Soulis and Yves Hugonin, and if the one matter is still unproven, guilty or no, the other cries out too loud to be passed over. Let Brien de Soulis rest as well as he may, it is too late to accuse him, at least here. But Hugonin, no, there is too great a doubt. I no longer accuse him, I dare not. Come, see him released to ride and rejoin his own faction, wherever he pleases."

In the hall of La Musarderie trestle tables and benches were all cleared away, leaving the great space stark and bare, the central fire roused and well tended, for winter was beginning to bite with night frosts, and for all the shelter of the deep river valley the winds found their bitter way in by every shutter and every arrow-slit. Philip's officers gathered there turned impartial faces as he entered, and a cluster of men-at-arms held off and watched, awaiting his will.

"Master of arms," said Philip, "go and bring up Yves Hugonin from his cell. Take the smith with you, and strike off his chains. It has been shown me that in all probability I have done him wrong in thinking him guilty of de Soulis's death. At least I have doubt enough in me to turn him loose and clear him of all offence against me. Go and fetch him here."

They went without hesitation, with a kind of indifferent briskness that came naturally to these men who served him. Fear had no part in their unquestioning promptness. Any who feared him would have fallen off from him and taken themselves elsewhere.

"You have given me no chance to be grateful," said Cadfael in Philip's ear.

"There is no occasion for gratitude here. If you have told me truth, this is due. I make too much haste, sometimes, but I do not of intent spit in the face of truth." And to some of the men who hovered in the doorway: "See his horse saddled, and his saddle-roll well provided. No, wait a while for that. His own grooming may take a while, and we must send our guests forth fed and presentable."

They went to do his bidding, to heat water and carry it to an empty apartment, and install there the saddle-roll that had been hoisted from the horse when Yves had been brought in prisoner. So it was more than half an hour later when the boy was brought into the hall before his captor, and baulked and stared at the sight of Brother Cadfael standing at Philip's side.

"Here is one says I have grossly mistaken you," said Philip directly, "and I have begun to be of his opinion. I make known now that you are free to go, no enemy henceforth of mine, and not to be meddled with where my writ runs."

Yves looked from one to the other, and was at a loss, so suddenly hailed out of his prison and brought forth into the light. He had been captive for so short a time that the signs hardly showed on him at all. His wrists were bruised from the irons, but there was no more than a thin blue line to be seen, and either he had been housed somewhere clean and dry, or he had changed into fresh clothes. His hair, still damp, curled about his head, drying fluffy as a child's. But there were the dark shadows of anger and suspicion in the stiffness of his face when he looked at Philip.